Am I Centrist?

Take a quiz to find out how centrist you are and where you sit on the political spectrum.

The Political Compass quiz will reveal where you stand alongside well-known political leaders, showing whether you tend towards the left or right, and whether you favour a liberal or authoritarian approach. If you come out somewhere in the middle, then you might be thinking like a Centrist!

Take the Quiz

Your answers and results are entirely anonymous.

21 Replies to “Am I Centrist?”

  1. “What is centrism” defines it to be the desire to seek consensus, wherever that may be, yet this seems more about finding out whether your own views lie in the centre of the political spectrum, which doesn’t seem relevant – if I was a centrist, I’d care more about everyone else’s views than my own ?

    1. Consensus means the course of action that a large majority will go along with even though it might not be first choice for some of them. The quiz is exactly as you say – if you’re towards the centre you’re likely to be close to the consensus position. As someone else remarked – any one who believes in democracy is a centrist because it means agreeing that the majority view should prevail

      1. Have you considered that you confuse consensus with consent?
        What you describe is the consent of those consulted to go with some collective decision – for example to accept the majority vote to leave the EU (single market, customs union and all) in the recent UK referendum rather than be a LibDem.

        Whereas a drive to consensus can only lead to one of the following bad outcomes: a) Groupthink where there can be no dissent or creative tension; Paralysis, because no common ground exists; or, False Consensus, which is agreement through indifference or dis-engagement.

        Consensus is thus best avoided.

        1. Consensus is thus best avoided“! Wow! No, Doris – an interesting post but I don’t think I can agree with your thrust. Consensus is a very common concept within management. In a group of people there are several opinions on the best course of action and after thorough discussion consensus (general agreement) emerges on which is the most appropriate. Consent is a slightly more aloof concept – “oh get on with it if you want” while concensus is involving in the decision process. And your paragraph on consensus only leading to bad outcomes is, for me, just wrong or based on a completely different understanding of what consensus is.
          The key thing is that consensus brings people together to get them behind the agreed course of action.

  2. Fascinating but I am beginning to wonder if I qualify as a Centrist!
    Economic left/right: -6.0
    Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.18
    This leaves me well in the left libertarian quadrant which lies just below Nicola Sturgeon’s neck and on Bernie Sanders bald patch. I am happier with the latter!

  3. Perhaps this is connected with Dave’s point above. Your personal preferences are leftish and libertarian but your Centrism is above that – recognising that you have to live in a consensual society where we do what suits most people

    1. Yes I’m in the same leftish/libertarian quadrant west of the Greens, which is about right but I recognise the importance of the majority decision. I am fundamentally a Centrist. However, on a note of caution, I’m in Rome and visited the Coleseum yesterday – where the majority of the (voting) citizens thought that slaughtering many thousands of men and animals was great fun.

  4. It is easy to be glib, to criticise such an endeavour in its naissance but having read your manifesto – its long – and finally piqued by the QUIZ option, I clicked. I was immediately dismayed. All this noble talk of consensus and arrival at a consensus was shattered by the first question …

    If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

    If I disagreed would I be favouring humanity. If I disagreed would I lie in the corporate camp. How could I choose when economic globalisation is not inevitable!

    1. Glad to see you getting to the heart of the matter immediately Maurice 🙂 I suspect that the question isn’t asking you if you agree that globalisation is inevitable – rather, were it to be so who should it serve primarily?

  5. Hеllo my family member! I wish to ѕay that this post is awesome,
    nice written and include approximately all vital infos.
    I wօuld like to see more posts liкe this .

  6. This is really fascinating, You aге an excessively professional blogger.
    I’ve joined your rss feed and stay up for in search of more of your excellent post.
    Additionally, Ӏ’ve sһared your ѡebsite in mу social networks

  7. I seem to be more extreme than Michael Thomas scoring -8.25 on the Left-Right axis and -7.03 on the Libertarian-Authoritarian axis. Having acknowledged this I am inclined to accept consensus and recognise that my views may need to be subordinated to the greater good if that is the only way to get a government that acts in the interests of the many, not the few! Knowing me you may not be surprised by this.

    1. Peter Kayes my old friend! Of COURSE you’re more extreme than Michael Thomas – you have been for the last 50 years or so! Why should anything change? However, I think you hit the nail on the head with your self-understanding about accepting consensus and subordinating your (our) own views to the greater good. Any of us might individually have a preference for more state intervention in education, or tougher police powers, or progressing towards to the United States of Europe, or renationalising the power companies or anything else where on that issue we’re at one extreme of the spectrum. And while we can campaign for those positions, if we can’t persuade enough people – and we get left holding both poles of the banner – then we know we are going to have to go along with a consensus which is not our favourite. Yet we’re happy with that because we’re all members of the Homo Sapiens Party!

  8. Typical male chauvinist quiz – no question on whether men should go out to work or look after the house and kids while the women run the world – which they do increasingly, despite incompetent men surrounding them!
    I score just to the left of the 2017 labour position , although I don’t particularly like Corbyn – he doesn’t include enough of the talented female Labour mps in his shadow cabinet.

    1. Hi Helen. Sorry about the gender bias of the quiz – it was the only one we could find! But I think you might be right that there is more to be done on gender issues than we might have acknowledged. Half of the electorate, I am told, are women! I wonder what an annual survey on well-being would tell us of the relative importance of gender issues. For example which causes the greatest unhappiness, homelessness (severe but only a few people) or women’s status (not so severe but perhaps affecting half the electorate). And then what is a sensible approach? For my part, I’m convinced that organisations that have women pretty equally represented at all levels work better – the West Sussex Hospitals Foundation Trust is a great example. But there aren’t many examples and not a lot of hard evidence. If you look in DEPARTMENT FOR HOUSING, COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT within Our Programme you’ll find our strategic initiative on gender issues. If you think it can be improved we’d be delighted to hear from you.

  9. I’ve done these kinds of tests before and quite a few questions I’d like to answer ‘neither agree nor disagree’. That would shift my true position closer to the centre, although I’m by no means an outlier.

    There’s also a huge difference between saying ‘I don’t see any point to trying to rehabilitate 0.1% of criminals’ and ‘There’s no point in trying to rehabilitate 15% of criminals’.

    The nature of these ‘black and white’ statements often causes centrists to say ‘Hold on a minute – this is far too black and white’, when the reality of the world is that the answer ‘It depends’ is actually the most appropriate.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *